My FAV 3rd Person Slasher. For serious gamers with patience.
Customer Rating: 
I don't mean patience as in you'll be waiting for the good parts. I meant you'll be getting hit in the face the entire game, even in the easiest difficulty.
I don't prefer to think of the difficulty settings as being Easy(Acolyte) and Hard(Warrior). Acolyte difficulty is more like Hard difficulty and Warrior is more like Very Hard. In Acolyte setting you'll find yourself learning to play the game and quickly using what you learned to play it. You better have learned well because if you haven't this game will kill you. If you didn't learn from the first Acolyte and jumped straight into Warrior, you would have a very frustrating time learning the mechanics.
I have been a fan of the Devil May Cry/Onimusha/God Of War style games for a long time. Some can be proven to be difficult, some are moderately challenging, and some are a great experience but seriously held your hand the entire game...
Ninja Gaiden 2 decided to throw that concept out the window and show you that sometimes learning to play a game means dying a whole lot. Luckily getting back to where you met defeat isn't so tedious but you still can't expect to respawn where you died or anything.
I guess I can try to better describe some deeper things to better my point. If you have played any of the 'like' games, you'd notice that they all have very involving combat styles and are addicting. You'll also notice that it can get kind of hard later on in the game on the harder difficulties but for the most part, you just watch a few minor things and you're ok. Pretty much this level of gaming is like autopilot for the brain. You are paying attention and enjoying yourself, but you are also paying attention to other things; the scenery, other thoughts in your mind, etc. For the most part your battle can be conducted without having all of your attention in these battles.
NOT THIS GAME. I'd say by the second/third level of acolyte, and the FIRST level of warrior you are already experiencing this: you have to pay so much attention to your surrounding opponents and environment that if you just so happen as to direct some attention to other thoughts, you will get owned. I started thinking about some things last night playing this game and died in like 15 seconds. Didn't see it coming. You have some opportunities to gain healing items, but typically they are foolish to use in skirmishes with minions instead of bosses.(The bosses are terribly powerful and do not hesitate to own your face.) You have to practice combat and remember to keep every opponent busy and manipulate them and your surroundings to take as little damage as possible before you get to the boss so you can keep your much needed healing items for the boss battles.
One thing that is awesome about this 'difficult combat' aspect, is once you know exactly how to manipulate the enemies and stay on the horde, the battle sequences look SO good. You actually have full interaction inside all of the insanity and death. It's very difficult but very rewarding because of it. I much prefer games that take practice over games that are accessible to anyone. (Street Fighter 4 for example). If you wanted a good, violent 3rd person slasher game, and you prefer a challenge that you can always get better at and always find challenging? Look no further
Not for casual gamers
Customer Rating: 
"Easy" apparently means different things to different people, and the creators of Ninja Gaiden 2 are either illiterate or just wanted to fool folks into buying their game. I'm a casual gamer, not looking for a eject-and-throw-the-disc-at-the-wall experience, and when a game has an easy setting I expect it to be just that. Perhaps the God of War series has spoiled me? Luckily I only dropped [...] for this crap, and should hopefully get at least 4 when I trade it in for, hopefully, a game that has an easy level that lives up to the name. But at least this game isn't as bad as Ninja Blade, as Ninja Gaiden 2 at least has multiple save points throughout, whereas with Ninja Blade you have the same ignoring/illiteracy when it comes to the word "easy", but can't save until you've played through an entire level, multiple boss battles and all.
